Task:You must chooseONEof the following options.A.Choose the following topic for theessay.Economists have long been dealingwith the puzzle that fertility tends to be negativelyrelated to incomeboth in time series and cross section. Becker (1960) rejected explanationsfor this relationship whichassert that children are inferior goods or that highincome families, who spend more on their children, have lower fertility because theyface higher prices of children.Heattempted to address thepuzzle viathe Quantity-Quality (QQ) model which argues that children are a superior good andrecognizes that thedemand for children involves, in addition to the quantitative dimensionrepresented by the number of children, a qualitative dimension associated with thechoice of expenditures per child. He proposed a simplemodel of fertility behavior in which parents had preferences both for thenumber ofchildren andthe quality per child.
2One implication of the QQ model is that a smaller family size should foster the development of higherquality children.A large and growing body of empirical research tests the QQ model by estimatingthe relationship between family size and children’s outcomes. Much of the early literature found that larger families reduce child quality, suchas educational attainment while more recent studies from several developed countries, argue that family sizehas no causal effect on children’s outcomes.
Given the above,
(a)Discuss the theoretical framework of the QQ model
(b)Explain implications of the QQ model for policy in developing/developed countries.
(c)Evaluate the empirical evidence on QQ model